<rant>I'm sorry but the fact that ArcGIS doesn't support the most common open source DB out of the box is really pathetic. How much is a ArcSde license? I can almost bet it's not cheap. </rant>
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Nathan WMar 4 '11 at 11:44

+1 zigGIS was a very early beta tester with good results - sent loads of feedback and most was implemented. They switched from free-to-paid and now back to opensource.
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Mapperz♦Jul 26 '11 at 2:33

-1, not because it was a bad answer, but because the passage of time and consequent changes has made it so (zig discontinued, now native arcgis support for Post geometry) and this answer shouldn't be at the top anymore.
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matt wilkieDec 12 '14 at 14:17

It's been a while since this question was updated, so briefly ArcGIS 10.1 and ArcGIS 10.2 both natively support PostGreSQL and PostGIS data types. Included in the help for both versions is a walkthrough of gettting set up, and configuring tables to use the PostGIS geometry types.

I followed Bills blog, and the esri documentation to successfully get Postgresql and PostGIS working with ArcSDE. I agree that you need to use the version supported by esri, even though they may sometimes be hard to find e.g Postgresql 8.4.1 was tricky to locate.
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AndoMar 21 '11 at 22:34

First of all:
You will only be able to use ArcGIS with PostgreSQL using OLE DB connections, meaning, you will only be able to read common tables and collumns (you even will be able to read the spatial collumns, but ArcGIS cannot do anything to them,

To use ArcGIS and PostgreSQL + PostGIS (meaning that you need to see spatial data), you will need ArcSDE or ZigGIS.

With both options you can query, edit and analyze data stored in PostGIS, inside ArcMap or other ESRIs tools.

ArcSDE is a middleware provided by ESRI, changing the whole workflow (of installing, configuring a geodatabse, etc) of work and ZigGIS is desktop tool (I mean, only used when ESRIs desktop tools are involved).

I saw this post come through another list source recently that stated "zigGIS has officially reached its end-of-life since the next version of ArcGIS should support direct read / write interoperability with PostGIS (thereby rendering zigGIS moot)." groups.google.com/group/ziggis/browse_thread/thread/…
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RyanDaltonAug 12 '11 at 15:43

New to the scene: ST-Links pgMap. The software is freeware, and works with ArcGIS 9.3 and up.

The download has a nice PDF to document the capabilities, which include viewing, editing, etc.

As I know, many people have been using this small useful tools since last year. The tool work with PostgreSQL 8.3/8.4. Not work for PostgreSQL 9.0 yet. A new release for working with PostgreSQL 9.0 should come out very soon.

Mike, looking @ the documentation ST-Links seems like it may have awesome potential. Have you used it personally? Do you have any impressions of its speed and usability you can share with the community?
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RyanDaltonJul 21 '11 at 23:27

Actually, I'm still figuring out the install process .. I have ArcGIS 9.3 installed with a custom configuration, but I don't see pgMap 1.0 in the Extensions yet .. hopefully someone else can share their experience
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Mike TJul 21 '11 at 23:34

1

Please forgive the link to my own blog, but I took a look at PgMap after the announcement that zigGIS was shutting down. My observations are here: blog.geomusings.com/2011/08/09/taking-a-look-at-pgmap Given that it looks like ArcMap will not be able to directly edit spatial databases at 10.1, PgMap looks all the more compelling.
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Bill DollinsAug 19 '11 at 11:03